RGR(1)

NAME
rgr - An interactive replacer for ripgrep that makes it easy to find and replace across files on the command line.

DESCRIPTION

In order to use this tool you must have first installed rg (AKA: ripgrep). See:

USAGE

Normal Usage

Upon start all command line arguments are passed down to rg (adding --json and --no-config). The JSON output is then parsed, and you are presented with a terminal interface (described below).

Note since we use the --json flag, a number of rg's flags are unavailable. See rgr --help for a list of supported flags that will be sent through to ripgrep.

Capturing Groups

You may use capturing groups when using rgr, for example rgr "foo (\w+)". When using these, the matches can be used when replacing by referring to them as either their name $name or index $1. This syntax is inherited from the regex crate, see:

Only one pattern may be passed at a time when capturing groups are used (i.e., multiple -e <pat> flags are not allowed).

Automatic replacement

Pass -y or --autoreplace together with -r or --replace to replace every match without opening the interactive interface. For example, rgr -y "old_name" -r "new_name".

The replacement must be supplied explicitly. Automatic replacement exits with an error before searching if -r or --replace is missing.

Reading results from a file

This tool also supports reading results from a JSON file, with the following use case in mind:

    • The user runs "rg --json <args> > rg-results.json"

    • Now, this tool can be run with those results via "RGR_JSON_FILE=./rg-results.json rgr"

INTERFACE

To see a list of keybindings, press ? while in the SELECT mode. There are a few different modes:

SELECT

    • This mode is the first mode presented after rgr is started.

    • In this mode a list of matches is presented, and they can be toggled on or off.

    • Toggling a match off means that the match itself will not be replaced.

REPLACE

    • In this mode the user types the desired replacement text and the matches are updated in real-time.

    • Note that this is a demo only, no changes are written to disk.

    • Non UTF-8 bytes in the matches are shown with the UTF-8 replacement character in this mode.

    • Pressing control+s will cause all selected matches to be replaced with the text entered.

CONFIRM

    • Prompt the user to confirm before writing replacements to disk.

    • Replacements are written to disk, and all attempts to use the correct file encoding are made. (see FILE ENCODING.)

    • Note that rgr will not replace a different slice of bytes than what rg reported in its output. (see FILE ENCODING.)

HELP

    • This mode provides information about rgr and its keybindings.

CONTROL CHARACTERS

The user may change how control characters are rendered in the interface by pressing control+v. The different modes are:

    • C: show common control characters

    • c: show common control characters (one line)

    • A: show all control characters

    • a: show all control characters (one line)

    • H: show common control characters as spaces, and strip others (hidden)

FILE ENCODING

Handling of file encoding happens in two places: the SELECT mode and when the replacements are written to disk.

In the SELECT mode, non UTF-8 bytes are shown with the UTF-8 replacement character. This occurs because the files themselves have not yet been read (the information is directly from ripgrep) and thus the encoding of the file is unknown.

During replacement encoding is handled in the following manner:

    • If a BOM (Byte Order Mark) is found, then that encoding is used, otherwise

    • If an encoding was passed to ripgrep, then that encoding is used, otherwise

    • The chardet (library is used to detect the encoding

    • If that fails, then UTF8 is assumed

Note that rgr will never replace a match that it doesn’t expect. If when replacing a match the bytes to replace do not match those matched by ripgrep, then the tool will bail out and the file will not be written. (Errors will be reported to STDERR.)

HOMEPAGE

BUGS AND FEATURES

Please report bugs and feature requests in the issue tracker. Do your best to provide a reproducible test case for bugs. Also please include the version of rgr and rg.